A 35-year-old woman lost both her legs after she fell from a train at the Khandala Railway Station while resisting a thief on an interstate train early on Wednesday morning. The victim, who is being treated at a private hospital in Talegoan near Pune, was travelling with her family to attend a marriage in Surat, Gujarat.

At 3 am on Wednesday, five unidentified men barged into a compartment on the Sikandarabad-Rajkot Express in which the victim, Sejal Ladola, was travelling with her family. “When the train approached Khandala railway station, five unidentified people barged into the reserved compartment. One of them snatched her purse and fled from the compartment. When the train was about to move, my wife realised that her purse had been stolen. She immediately got up and ran towards the thief,” said Sejal’s husband Sachin Ladola.

He added, “The train started to move while my wife struggled with the thief. The thief pushed her out of the train and she fell on the tracks.”

After the accident, Sachin said Sejal lay unconscious while the station-in-charge arranged for an ambulance to send her to the private hospital in Talegaon. The Railway Protection Force (RPF), however, claimed that the station-in-charge of Lonavala immediately rushed to Khandala with an ambulance.

Sachin, who is a businessman based in Sikandrabad, alleged that while the RPF recorded Sejal’s statement, no railway official visited her in hospital. Sejal may now require prosthetic legs to walk again.